Suggestion: Add a "Rogue" faction to Cyrodil

With the re-introduction to faction locks to Cyrodil, many voices has been made to why they´re needed, but also many voices to why it´s bad for PvP. This thread aims to add a solution that offers something for both those pro-faction lock, but also for those who oppose them. Before I go into the idea lets take a look at some of the arguments that people use for pro-faction lock and those against faction lock:

Pro-Faction lock:

It reduces the amount of griefing, scroll trading and the opportunity to trade emperor in the faction locked campaigns.

It makes the zone chats less "toxic" and reduces the amount of "spying"

Give people a sense of faction loyalty which adds some immersion to the game.

Prevents people from jumping/swap on the winning faction during the last few days of a campaign

Against faction locks:

Limits the amount of playable characters in a specific campaign which also can limit which in-game friends you can play with on that campaign.

It can create very noticable score- and population imbalances, since people can no longer swap to a "underdog" faction (if they want to)

Doesn´t solve the problem of "griefing/scroll- and emp trading" since it´s still doable in practice

Reduces the amount of transmute geodes you can get from the campaign rewards.

Now these arguments are the most common ones I see when these topics are discussed. Forgive me if I haven´t listed every single argument for either side. Now the suggestion I´m about to write up is a way to please both camps regarding this topic:

ROGUE FACTION:
With the fall of the Imperial empire the imperial army is divided and can be found in various smaller groups all over Cyrodil (rogue groups). The idea here is to give players to opportunity to play as such a group. You could also see this as a "4th faction" to a certain degree. Rogue groups will be considered as imperial outlaws, since it suits the immersion of Cyrodil the best in my opinion. Now how would this work:

* When selecting what campaign you want to use as your home campaign, the game will give you the option to play as "rogue". Accepting this request will strip your account of the opportunity of playing as any of the other alliances on that specific campaign for the entire duration of the campaign. This means once you go "rogue" on a campaign, all of your characters will be considered "rogue" for that campaign.

* You can also decide to group up with other players/friends and queue as a "rogue group" for a campaign. If your group decides to queue as "rogue" all of your group members characters for their account will also be considered rogue for that campaign duration.

* Once the campaign has ended, your account will lose the rogue status and you´ll have to activily make a choice to play as a rogue once again if wanted to.

Now what are the features and limitations about rogue groups?

A rogue group plays on the "free for all" aspect, where you can attack, and get attacked by everyone (including other rogue groups)

A rogue group can´t exceed the group size of 8 players. This is to limit "ball-groups" to abuse this feature too much.

As a rogue you can still earn "alliance points" but for obvious reasons there´s no leaderboard.

Since the rogue faction is made out of Imperial outlaws, they can´t capture keeps in the inner emp-circle (since the imperials have no emperor to answer to anyway)

Rogue groups can´t pick up scrolls, since they´ve no home keeps to place them in anyway.

Rogue groups can capture reasources, outposts and non-emp keeps.

Since rogue groups doesn´t answer to any alliance, they won´t be able to receive and rewards when the campaign has ended (aka no transmute geodes), however, you´ll still be able to get "Rewards of the Worthy" boxes as you gain AP.

The Imperial NPC camps that are scattered all over Cyrodil will act as respawn points for rogue players/groups, and you´ll also have the feature to place similar camps (similar to respawn camps).

The Rogue faction will have it´s own "Golden Vendor" and a similar base to all of the other alliances (see NPC camps)

As you can see, the option to play as a rogue group comes with features, but also some noticable trade-offs, such as missing out on the "End of the Campaign"-rewards and the opportunity to crown emperor. Let me know what you Think

Well, why not...But sctolls need to be farmed same for circle keeps i think cause keeps are not about leaderboad/scoring/emp, its more about mobility for small groups(imagine running in combat bug on your warden from drake to ash)
Instead of scroll ban i'd better ban "artifact pickup"
The idea "no end-camp reward" is good(anyway every1 gets 999999 rings of battlefield acrobat, so whats the point), however, it will be better to increase gold/ap amount gained(cause ppl fight for money) fir such "faction"

I'm rather less confident that the "Rogue" faction wouldn't simply wind up an advanced form of trolling the various alliances and farming at various objectives. Especially since your design basically forces them to hang out near the alliances' back keeps, outposts, and towns. Its doubtful they'd be equal opportunity farmers, and unlike with the factions who can score points, they'd have very little incentive to target the 1st place faction or even all factions equally.

I'm rather less confident that the "Rogue" faction wouldn't simply wind up an advanced form of trolling the various alliances and farming at various objectives. Especially since your design basically forces them to hang out near the alliances' back keeps, outposts, and towns. Its doubtful they'd be equal opportunity farmers, and unlike with the factions who can score points, they'd have very little incentive to target the 1st place faction or even all factions equally.

The design and "rules" are more of a brainstorm and could of course use some improvements. But look at it this way:

One of the biggest issue with Cyrodil has always been the poor performance (at least for the 30 day campaigns). ZOS has tried to battle this by trying to make people spread out across the map. So far I personally haven´t seen the effects of this and the majority of players still run back and forth between Bleaker and Chalman (not literally but you get my point). So far there´s no real initiative to spread out in Cyrodil.

A "rogue faction" more or less forces players to spread out and protect their homekeeps, since as you said, the design I presented encourage a rogue group to attack homekeeps.

ZOS also mentioned that they wanted to add "chaos" to Cyrodil, so they added Volendrung. I personally think volendrung was a horrible idea, but adding the ability to go "rogue" would most certainly add aspects of "chaos" to Cyrodil.

And regarding your last point about what faction to target, you could make the AP gain from attacking the leading faction slightly (not by much) higher.

I'm rather less confident that the "Rogue" faction wouldn't simply wind up an advanced form of trolling the various alliances and farming at various objectives. Especially since your design basically forces them to hang out near the alliances' back keeps, outposts, and towns. Its doubtful they'd be equal opportunity farmers, and unlike with the factions who can score points, they'd have very little incentive to target the 1st place faction or even all factions equally.

The design and "rules" are more of a brainstorm and could of course use some improvements. But look at it this way:

One of the biggest issue with Cyrodil has always been the poor performance (at least for the 30 day campaigns). ZOS has tried to battle this by trying to make people spread out across the map. So far I personally haven´t seen the effects of this and the majority of players still run back and forth between Bleaker and Chalman (not literally but you get my point). So far there´s no real initiative to spread out in Cyrodil.

A "rogue faction" more or less forces players to spread out and protect their homekeeps, since as you said, the design I presented encourage a rogue group to attack homekeeps.

ZOS also mentioned that they wanted to add "chaos" to Cyrodil, so they added Volendrung. I personally think volendrung was a horrible idea, but adding the ability to go "rogue" would most certainly add aspects of "chaos" to Cyrodil.

And regarding your last point about what faction to target, you could make the AP gain from attacking the leading faction slightly (not by much) higher.

So what I'm hearing is the trolling and farming is totally intended, but it's all okay because it'll help with performance because players will have to spread out to deal with the rogue faction trolling/farm groups.

And it definitely won't have a big impact on Cyrodiil now that the rogue faction can effectively play spoiler for whichever alliance they don't like without suffering any downsides whatsoever. They won't ever cooperate with other alliances to capture scroll keeps only to let the scroll be taken by another alliance. Moreover, alliances will never end up targeted by 3 sides at once.

Certainly, there will never be a time period when the rogues online outnumber one or more of the regular factions during nightime hours or on less populated campaigns.

I get how this idea benefits sort of player who wants to go rogue, but I'm really not buying that its a good thing for Cyrodiil as a whole or for any of the existing alliances.

I would really like to know what everyone opposing this idea consider as "trolling", so feel free to define that.

People go to Cyrodil for various of reasons. Some go there to play for their alliance, some other just go there to farm AP. And there´re probably another 200 different reasons to why people might go there. And frankly I don´t really understand why people consider AP farming as something almost "explotive" (since AP farming keeps getting brought up again and again).

Cyrodil is a place for any kind of group size, doesn´t matter if you play solo, in smaller groups or in faction zergs (which I personally dislike quite a bit). And I disagree that Cyrodil is only for large scale PvP, Cyrodil isn´t a place mainly for large scale PvP, all kinds of PvP needs their viability.

During the last few years, orginized group play (especially in smaller groups) has received little to no attention and/or features handed to them, and with faction locks, it didn´t make the situation better. Rogue factions would be a nice feature for a quite large part of the player base, and if not making it a permanent feature, it would be interesting to test it for 1-2 patches to see how it works out, and then revaluate it.

In this case, trolling is any small group that is just farming ap. They take a rss and just sit there killing the solo players. They wait at a keep that is ua then bomb the siege line. Basically they do nothing except harass the other alliance for chuckles. They aren't being tactical they aren't disrupting the enemy, they are just derpping around.

Or just you know GIVE US THE CHANCE TO CHOOSE OUR FACTION AT THE BEGINNING OF EVERY CAMPAIN ? !!

I mean for real since one tamriel there is no need for allinaces anyway (well besides making money with the crownstore far from home pack). I know Zos said several times they wont introduce it or factionchange-tokens because there are to many gameplay mechanics tied to the alliance system (what i have seen so far this includes the colour of your pvp rank and some minor dialog options at the beginning of caldwells silver/gold) but it just sucks that i cant play with some of my friends anymore because there is only one no cps campain.

Another Idea would be to rework the Imperial City into an "large" Bg", so the players who complain about faction lock can still play together somehow. It has its own Scores and leaderbords but instead of fighting for the DC/AD/EP we choose our factions every new campaincircle. The the factions gain points for holding the districts/killing molag/Areabosses/doing daily quests etc

The factions could be something like:

Remnants of the Emperial Legion: They obviosly want to save the IC and retake it

Outlaw faction: they emerged from several outlaw factions after the fall of the IC and now they want to take the oportunety to take over the city

Cult of Molag Bal: Followers of Molag Bal but they are so insignificant that the Prince wont acknowledge them, so they challenge the minions of molag Bal to show him that they are stronger than the Xivkyn.

If one factions controlls all district they will get a unique buff

Legion: Last Stand (adding some dmg mitigation/additional dmg)
Outlaws: Scouts (every x mins all players in the Ic get revealed for a small period of time)
Cultists: Blessing of Molag Bal (max ressources/more reg)

I would really like to know what everyone opposing this idea consider as "trolling", so feel free to define that.

People go to Cyrodil for various of reasons. Some go there to play for their alliance, some other just go there to farm AP. And there´re probably another 200 different reasons to why people might go there. And frankly I don´t really understand why people consider AP farming as something almost "explotive" (since AP farming keeps getting brought up again and again).

Cyrodil is a place for any kind of group size, doesn´t matter if you play solo, in smaller groups or in faction zergs (which I personally dislike quite a bit). And I disagree that Cyrodil is only for large scale PvP, Cyrodil isn´t a place mainly for large scale PvP, all kinds of PvP needs their viability.

During the last few years, orginized group play (especially in smaller groups) has received little to no attention and/or features handed to them, and with faction locks, it didn´t make the situation better. Rogue factions would be a nice feature for a quite large part of the player base, and if not making it a permanent feature, it would be interesting to test it for 1-2 patches to see how it works out, and then revaluate it.

When you make a suggestion, you have to grapple with the disruptive impact its going to have and you have to explain how its substantially better than the status quo.

Adding a fourth faction would be extremely disruptive to Cyrodiil, who's geography, objectives, and scoring is entirely designed for tri-faction AvAvA not AvAvAvR. We've listed some of those disruptions, and you have not addressed them.

Your idea is beneficial only for those players who want to play as a Rogue.

The sole benefit for anyone else is your claim that it would help performance by causing players to spread out. I don't buy that, since Cyrodiil still generates large fights by its very design and that's where performance issues are most apparent.

The downsides for players who aren't Rogues include, but are not limited to:
A. Lower alliance population, since Cyrodiil's max pop is now split 4-ways.
B. Rogue players who can't pick up scrolls can still open up scroll keeps and temples for other alliances to steal them. Rogues can also kill scroll runners or artifact wielders and let other alliances take advantage.
C. Rogue players who can't score points can nonetheless impact your alliance's scoring
D. You can't stop a Rogue offensive by hitting their back keeps like you can another alliance, because Rogues have no score to care about. You can't even cut off their closest respawn point, because the Imperial camps can't be captured.
E. There's nothing preventing Rogues from cooperating, deliberately or de facto, with other alliances, to act as a spoiler for a certain alliance.
F. When alliance groups farm at a resource or keep, that portion of their alliance is occupied and not attacking you elsewhere, creating some disadvantage to their alliance. Rogues can farm with no disadvantage, since they have no score.
G. Unless they want to farm, there's no reason for a rogue group to defend keeps since they'll make more AP capturing objectives with PvDoor.

Having a fourth faction who doesn't have to care about the score really has the potential to screw over the 3 original factions who do have to care about the score.

Nor do I think the potential enjoyment of the 25% of players who could play Rogue really justifies changing how Cyrodiil is played by the 75% who remain in the original factions. That's very much redesigning a new vision of Cyrodiil to favor a minority of players who basically have no interest in playing Cyrodiil as designed.

So as a player who has no interest in playing a Rogue, I'm really struggling to see why this idea is a good thing for the AvAvA focused Cyrodiil I've enjoyed playing for years.

Interesting idea but I don't see it being good for the game since this group of "Rogues" will just be a glorified group of tower farmers who are would only be there to troll players from the other 3 alliances and farm AP.

Imagine all these AD snipe spammers going “Rogue”. You walk out of your furthest advanced Keep to try to head to the next and getting met with 10+ snipes as they stay in crouched position waiting for the next unfortunate soul to walk out. This is what a “Rogue” faction would promote. Sure there will be small scalers and tower farmers. But the amount of snipe spamming NightBlades would be unbearable.

Interesting idea but I don't see it being good for the game since this group of "Rogues" will just be a glorified group of tower farmers who are would only be there to troll players from the other 3 alliances and farm AP.

how's that different from today though ?
there's ball groups on all 3 alliance. It would just be nice to be able to fight all of them.

Sign me up anytime.
Though I don't get why there wouldn't be a leaderboard for rogues. It's not RP to have leaderboards for factions in the first place.
And I want geodes no matter what

Imagine all these AD snipe spammers going “Rogue”. You walk out of your furthest advanced Keep to try to head to the next and getting met with 10+ snipes as they stay in crouched position waiting for the next unfortunate soul to walk out. This is what a “Rogue” faction would promote. Sure there will be small scalers and tower farmers. But the amount of snipe spamming NightBlades would be unbearable.

In this case, trolling is any small group that is just farming ap. They take a rss and just sit there killing the solo players. They wait at a keep that is ua then bomb the siege line. Basically they do nothing except harass the other alliance for chuckles. They aren't being tactical they aren't disrupting the enemy, they are just derpping around.

That's not true! They always tactically retreat whenever you pose a challenge or turn the tables!